Police officers take an oath to “protect and serve” the people in their community.
But some do not always abide by their oath.
And all hell is breaking loose over what two Florida police officers got caught on camera doing to a teenage boy.
Almost everyone walks around with a camera in their pocket these days.
The widespread use of smartphone cameras has changed society in many ways.
This is especially true in law enforcement.
Nothing has exposed police brutality more than smartphone cameras.
And two police officers in Lakeland, Florida are under fire for what a smartphone camera caught them doing to a 16-year-old boy.
On Memorial Day, police responded to a call from the Carolina Apartments about people using the pool who do not live there.
Once on the scene, the manager asked the officers to remove anyone at the pool who did not live at the apartment complex.
The officers approached a 16-year-old boy named Jahmal Hudson who refused to identify himself and provide them with his apartment number.
“One of the moms asked them to tone down the language and they gave her the what-for, too, and then that prompted the call to the police,” Lakeland Police Chief Sam Taylor said. “Obviously it went downhill from there,” he continued. “They didn’t want to tell us their names, they didn’t want to tell us where they live, they told us they didn’t have to talk to us.”
After the boy was verbally told to leave the pool, he went to get his belongings and never left the property.
According to the police report, the teen “tensed his body” and put his hand in the officer’s face after he asked him to leave the property for the second time.
“Hudson continued to ignore my verbal commands and stuck his hand in my face, while stating, ‘I don’t have to talk to you,’” one officer wrote in the report.
The teenager was arrested and charged with trespassing, failure to leave property, battery on a law enforcement officer, and resisting an officer with violence.
But a video filmed by a bystander tells a different story about what really happened that day.
The video shows the two grown police officers punching and using a taser on the young boy.
“In the video, the teen is seen pressed up against a wall as an officer punches him in the head repeatedly,” WFLA reported. “At one point, the second officer grabs his hair while the other continues punching him in the head,” WFLA continued. “The teen makes several attempts to get the officers to stop punching him by swinging his arms.”
“While the second officer is punching him, the other deploys a Taser, knocking the teen to the ground,” WFLA added.
In the police report, the officers admitted to using “several closed fist strikes” against the boy.
The teenage boy was taken to a hospital for medical evaluation before he was transported by police to the Juvenile Assessment Center.
But the boy’s mother is furious over what the video showed the officers doing to her son.
“I couldn’t stomach the fact that two LPD officers literally battered my son,” the teen’s mother said. “Y’all are out here to protect and serve, not to be beating on peoples’ children.”
Lakeland Police Chief Sam Taylor has launched an internal affairs investigation.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: rg_tracy
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